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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Sport
Andrew Beasley

Four passes in 19 minutes: damning numbers behind England’s collapse

Morgan Rogers and his England teammates show their dismay after World Cup semi-final defeat by Argentina.
Many ugly statistics emerged once the postmortem into England’s World Cup semi-final defeat began. Photograph: Alex Livesey/Danehouse/Getty Images

There will be coaching courses of the future that use footage of England’s performance against Argentina to illustrate how not to defend a one-goal lead. If that sounds harsh, the data from the match justifies that stance.

Many ugly statistics emerged once the postmortem began. The most damning came from OptaJoe, who noted England had 12% possession in the 30 minutes between Anthony Gordon’s goal and Argentina’s equaliser. “That is the lowest by a team to be winning for at least 10 minutes in a World Cup match in the last 60 years,” they added.

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